


A Better Winter Holiday

by healingmirth



Category: Live Free or Die Hard
Genre: Christmas, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-27
Updated: 2008-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:37:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/healingmirth/pseuds/healingmirth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John employs a grand holiday tradition for the wrong reasons, but gets the right results.  (You say "clichéd premise," I say "cherished cultural icon!")</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Better Winter Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> What with the massive travel delays, and the limping economy and whatnot, the week leading up to Christmas was something of a disaster, so I am officially calling a do-over on holiday cheer and am celebrating the 12 days of Christmas. I thought, "Hey, I will write holiday fluff!" Next time I decide to write fluff, I need a shorter idea. Or maybe I should have taken Tim Gunn's advice about using my editing eye.

When Matt stepped out the door to take the trash down to the dumpster on the day after Christmas, the detritus of Lucy and Jack's visit piled high in his arms, he nearly went ass over teakettle down the stairs. He was saved, if it can be called that, by slamming his shoulder into the railing and bouncing to the floor in a shower of cardboard and wrapping paper. After a quick inventory to make sure he hadn't broken anything that he needed to walk, Matt levered himself upright, and stuck his head back into the apartment, where he could hear the whir of the exhaust fan, but not the shower any longer. "John?" he called out. "Are you expecting a shrubbery?"

McClane's head appeared through the bathroom door, a towel draped around his neck. "A what?"

"A shrubbery. Festive plant life. Perhaps some sort of artistically stunted tree." Matt stepped over it, back into the apartment and then out of the way so that the pot and its slightly ruffled contents were framed in the doorway for John to see. Whatever it was had clearly been kept indoors, since it was covered in healthy-looking leaves, unlike everything else in New York in winter.

"Huh." John took a few steps closer, scrubbing water out of his ears with the towel. "Maybe someone's moving, and they dropped it there on their way up or down."

"Right in front of our door? We might have a new candidate for least favorite neighbors." Matt leaned down to shove the pot out of the doorway, which was when he noticed there was a white envelope on one of those florists' things stuck into the soil. "Or maybe not. You sure you're not expecting a delivery?"

"Do I strike you as the sort of guy who buys a lot of plants?" Matt snagged the envelope out of the holder and offered it to John, who shook his head. "Nah, go ahead." There was no name or address on the envelope, but it wasn't sealed, so Matt figured if there was a name written on the card, he could just send it on its way. As it turned out, there wasn't a name there either, just a maybe-Latin phrase, _Pyrus calleryana_, scrawled across it in an unfamiliar hand, and a web address that probably belonged to the company that'd delivered it.

Matt looked back up to see McClane's raised eyebrows awaiting an explanation. "Nothing useful. You're not seeing anyone, are you?" He couldn't imagine when John would've had the time to date, but that didn't mean he hadn't met someone. John met a lot of people, and solved a lot of their problems. He was still a good-looking guy. It would be totally reasonable for some lonely woman to get all secret admirer-y over him at Christmastime.

"Nope, not even a nibble." John stared at the plant, cautiously. "Maybe I have a new arch-nemesis with a leafy-thing fetish. I bet they wouldn't have told me if there were any more Gruber kids."

Even with that horrifying thought taking hold, there really wasn't enough room in the hallway for the pot, so since there was no name on it, Matt decided to drag it into the apartment. As it bumped over the edge of the rug, a brightly-wrapped package shook loose from somewhere in the branches and bounced to the floor.

This time, Matt didn't bother asking, he just sat down on the floor next to the pot and took the paper off of the gift – carefully, because there was still no evidence as to who was the intended recipient. He opened up the box to expose a couple layers of tissue paper over something bubble-wrapped. Further investigation revealed a folded piece of printer paper that turned out to be the specs for a CPU that was probably the mystery item in the bubble-wrap. There was also a piece of green paper taped to the inside of the lid that had "On the first day of Christmas-" printed on it. It only took a second for him to put the pieces together, and when it did, Matt started to shake with laughter.

When he paused to draw a breath, he looked up to see John's upside-down face above him, squinting at him with what might've been worry. "It's a processor," he explained, turning around and still trying to contain his chuckles. "It's a processor in a pear tree," and he hummed a few bars of the song to illustrate.

John continued to be unimpressed, so he added, "It's a computer part. A very fast, reasonably expensive computer part. So either we can assume that it's not for you, or that the person who sent it to you has never actually _met_ you. But, you know, bonus points for creativity. Of course, I have no idea who'd send _me_ a computer part, 'cause I think everyone knows I'm still limping along with that laptop instead of something I can upgrade, but it was nice of them, whoever it was."

Apparently reassured that Matt hadn't lost his mind, John asked, "So, crisis over now? I can go get dressed?" Matt noticed that John was still standing there in just his boxers and the towel around his neck, bare feet probably cold on the hardwood in the hallway.

He took a moment to appreciate that other unexpected gift, and even though John had to be freezing, Matt was loathe to let the rare opportunity to ogle go. "Aw, where's your sense of adventure, _Detective_?"

"In my other pants. Which I'd like to go put on now?"

"Fine. Spoilsport!" he yelled after John as he disappeared into his room. Matt did a final quick inspection of John's ass, followed by the tree and the packaging, but didn't turn up any more hints as to who'd sent them. Nonetheless pleased at the morning's unexpected upturn, he went back out into the hall, gathered up the trash scattered there, and resumed his day.

The mystery gift and the identity of the mystery giver were on Matt's mind all day, but clues were thin on the ground. The web address was for a nursery up in Westchester County that specialized in trees for office buildings. They had a record of the sale; it'd been paid for by a money order that arrived with the box that had been delivered with the tree, but it was one of fifty such trees they'd delivered in the past 24 hours, and they couldn't tell him anything more. Apparently a there was big money in pear trees at Christmas.

He mentioned the gift to a few of his friends online, but nothing shook loose, and he'd never been so frustrated by how easy it was to lie over the internet. He resigned himself to waiting to see whether this was a one-time gift or whether he could expect the whole series. That was resolved the following morning when he found two video cards at the door, nestled in some sort of twiggy gift basket, and like the first gift, with no other hints as to its origin.

Matt hadn't picked up on much in the way of detective skills from John, which was just as well, cause a lot of his 'detecting' seemed to be fear-based. Still, Matt was making up for lost time this year, learning all sorts of fascinating things about people. The big lesson, of course, had been a healthy respect for criminal masterminds (who were not all comically overconfident) and insane henchmen (who were surprisingly effective in real life) but he'd also picked up little things, like what people did when they were lying. That seemed like it'd be of more use, and he did his best to poke around at work, which lead to his newest discovery: that secret admirers didn't hang around and giggle and drop unsubtle hints and then run away suspiciously when you caught them at it. To be fair, he hadn't had a secret admirer since 6th grade, so it's likely that they'd upped their game since then. Still, it was going to be a long two weeks if he spent it all second-guessing everyone's every word with nothing more to go on.

***

 

If John hadn't already been convinced that this was a great idea, Matt's stubborn refusal to believe that the present could possibly have been for him that first day would have sealed it. The kid had been working his ass off the past few months, trying to line up enough consulting jobs to live off of, but businesses were wary of bringing in anyone new unless they came with a name brand to back them up. He'd ended up taking a job in end-user tech support once he'd been recovered enough to work a 9-to-5, and John had learned not to ask how things were going unless he had an hour or two to spare. The one constant in Matt's stories was that people were idiots. Beyond that, they fell into two subcategories: idiots who deserved precisely the computer they'd bought, cause it was a piece of shit they hadn't bothered to research, or idiots who didn't even come close to deserving the computer they'd bought, because they were using 1% of its potential, like the apparently high percentage of people in New York who only used their $3000 computers to shop or pay bills over unsecured wireless networks, and download porn chock-full of viruses.

It was during one of those rants that Matt had first complained about his lack of a 'gaming rig.' John was content to let Matt vent without interruption until he ran out of words at home, if it meant he didn't take violent action at work, so he hadn't learned until some days later that that was another term for one of those fancy computers that the idiots didn't deserve. As the months passed, and Matt continued to stubbornly insist on paying rent to John rather than save up his money for a place or stuff of his own, John had hatched a plan to return some of the income to Matt. John didn't need the money, and it wasn't like he'd been using the spare room anyway. Plus, Matt had been surprisingly good company, and it was only fair to spread the joy around.

Freddie had been predictably unhappy to hear from John, but he'd grudgingly agreed to help when John had said it was for Matt. He'd been downright excited when he'd learned that he got to take some of Matt's money back from a cop. Freddie had said that Matt would want to design his own case, which John didn't understand except for supposing that maybe it was like a paint job on a racecar. Other than that, Freddie had sworn that his judgment was sound as far as components went, so John had let him loose with it. Freddie had also sworn, under threat of pain, that he wouldn't let on to Matt that he knew anything about the presents, if asked.

Now, John was having fun watching Matt's reaction every day, like Christmas morning but without the baggage and worry about it being _Christmas_, and even listened to Matt's technical ramblings and speculations with something close to interest and a straight face. It made him feel like he was watching a science show for kids, when Matt started trying to create analogies for what the different parts did or how much better they were than some other widget (and then John got a chance to do a little educating of his own when whatever Matt tried to analogize to was total bullshit). Matt was a pretty happy kid, in general, but he seemed more hopeful now than he had been, like this was the missing link between his life now and the one that Gabriel had stolen.  


***

 

On New Year's Eve, John had flatly refused to be anywhere out in the city with the crazy tourists, but in the end he'd given in to Matt's taunts about being an old man (although John had argued that being an adult meant freedom from stupid things like staying up until midnight, and then Matt had said that time was all a construction, really, and it was a marker of humanity that there was one moment with such significance, even if it was celebrated in different time zones and just shut up and drink your hot buttered rum ) and agreed to stay up until midnight with a bottle of Champagne and some of Matt's more experimental cooking posing as hors d'oeuvres.

John insisted on watching the painful spectacle of Dick Clark, although he really was much better than he'd been the year before. "God Bless 'im," he toasted. "I don't know if I could do that," he'd added later, and Matt talking about Stephen Hawking seemed to increase, rather than lessen, his horror at the prospect of being trapped in his own body, so he stopped.

Matt had hooked that morning's present (six speakers) up to the TV, before they both decided that rich-toned, (or accurate) sound didn't improve any of the performances and John muted the television. Instead, they just watched the crowd scenes flicker over the screen while John told stories of his earlier years on the force, when he said he hadn't had the seniority to get out of working New Year's, but Matt also suspected he hadn't had anyone to celebrate with. As gruff as he was, John seemed like the kind of guy to take the extra shift at the holidays so other people could spend time with their families.

He hadn't taken the extra shifts this year, though, and Matt had been hopeful about the prospect of bringing some extra holiday cheer into John's life. Matt hadn't wanted to go out, really, except for the fact that he thought he could trick John into forgetting himself enough to have a good time. Personally, was just as happy to stay in, as lame as it was, and bask in the glow of John's wry good humor. Everyone in Times Square seemed to be having a good time, mugging for the cameras and dancing around in their pens, but it had to be a pale imitation of the swarming pre-9/11 crowds in a pre-Disney Times Square. John sounded a little nostalgic for the chaos of the old days, when the energy had spilled out to all of the boroughs, even if it had been hell to work.

"It's just… you can't make that shit up, you know? No matter how quote-unquote real or how edgy they make New York on tv, they never get the _hum_. It's not fuckin' _Disneyland_, right? You gotta take the bad with the good or the good doesn't mean anything, you just trade in for a different sort of bad."

And on that oddly philosophical note, he turned the sound on the tv back up as the ball started to drop, and although John refused to join in as Matt self-consciously took up the countdown, he did join in the chorus of Auld Lang Syne after raising his glass of champagne in a toast.

Their conversation wound down after that, increasingly long pauses in a rum-fueled haze, until finally John was passed out in his recliner and Matt could sit there and watch him as he slept, warmed by another innocuous happy memory to offset the loneliness that still hung off John when he was tired.

Matt raised the bottle in a silent toast, and drained the rest of it before waking John up to save him aching muscles to go with his aching head in the morning. John's mind was instantly, improbably, awake as usual, but it took his body a little longer to catch up as Matt gave him a hand out of the chair and they bumped cozily together as Matt herded him off to his room to pass out again.

"Happy New Year, John," Matt whispered, and then took himself off to bed.

***

 

By the morning of January 6th, (twelve miscellaneous cables) Matt appeared to be no closer to figuring out the source of the presents, or maybe he'd just stopped talking to John about it, since John didn't actually know any of his friends to be able to offer opinions about them. John also thought that maybe Matt had been expecting a big reveal at the end of it all, because he seemed disappointed when the last gift arrived with no more identification than any of the rest of them had contained, and John caught him looking up at the door every time they heard footsteps in the hall outside. He was halfway to confessing a dozen times, but he convinced himself that Matt would insist on paying him back, and that would defeat the purpose, and put Matt even further from being able to set himself up. John told himself that it was worth a little confusion, and that he was only imagining that Matt looked like a kicked puppy.

When Matt got home from work on Monday, though, something was clearly different. He was flushed and nervous when he came through the door, and probably would have managed to break a bunch of things in the kitchen if it hadn't been for John's reflexes. When John had laid a hand on his arm to ask him what was wrong, Matt flinched away from him and spilled water all over himself, though he had at least managed to hold on to the glass that time.

John was convinced that Matt had somehow figured out that he was the source of the computer parts and everything was headed straight to the crapper, but rather than jump to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence, he decided to bite the bullet and just ask what was up. The last thing he was expecting Matt to say was, "So, I have a date. Tonight." John breathed a sigh of relief, until it turned out that was the second-to-last thing he was expecting, because the Matt followed it up with, "Greg? From work. I thought maybe he might have been the one, you know, with the presents? Because he's kind of shy."

"Oh, you figured it out? Congratulations." Something about that made John feel a little weak, but he didn't examine it too closely. He hadn't considered the possibility that someone else would take credit for the gifts, but if he'd wanted Matt to know, he'd had 12 chances to put his name on a card, on top of just, you know, _telling him_, so this was a bad time to have a change of heart. There was an excellent chance that Matt wouldn't even believe him, and Freddie might decide to be a little shit and hold to his word to not discuss it, just to piss John off.

Matt shook his head, winter-static hair floating up in a sort of cloud. "Oh, no, it wasn't him. I just thought it might have been, so I asked, and he didn't know what I was talking about, so I told him, and he thought it sounded like a really cool thing to do, and that he wished he _had_ thought of it, and I thought he meant, like, in general, but it turns out he meant, like, for me, and then by then I'd sort of forgotten that I was asking because I was going to let him down easy, even though it is a really bad idea to date people from work, and I really need to keep this job, but, I mean, it does really suck to get shot down, especially if it is after some big, romantic gesture, which of course this wasn't… So anyway, we're going out to dinner. Tonight."

"Oh. Well, congratulations anyway, then. Or good luck." This was precisely what he'd wanted, right? Matt happy and getting his life – his own, independent, life – back in order.

Matt seemed slightly less nervous after sharing the news, but he was still bouncing around the apartment like he was on uppers, and John tried his very hardest to keep the kid from going out on his first date in months with a scorch mark on his shirt or any other consequence of his inattention, until he finally made it out the door more or less in time to meet his date.

There was no question of John's going to bed before Matt got home; all sorts of bad shit happened in the city, even on a Monday night, and Matt wasn't in the habit of wandering the city by himself after dark. So John made himself some dinner and pulled a beer out of the fridge and dug in to wait on the couch. He flipped through the channels, but nothing held his attention. The longer he sat there, thinking about Matt out on a date with some kid, '_With some **other** kid_,' he told himself, firmly, the less the gifts seemed like a good idea, and the more they seemed like an invitation for pain. Matt had never asked, not once, if John was responsible for them, and even if John had been planning on lying about it, it stung a bit that he hadn't even made the short-list. Matt had asked some totally improbable other geek kid who he was _dating_ as a result, like John was incapable of a good deed, or being generous to a friend, or romance, '_not that I did it to be romantic_,' he told himself.

It wasn't until the clock ticked over to 11pm that it occurred to him that maybe Matt would choose to not come home, and he decided to stay up to watch Letterman – a rerun, with a monologue that was still funny with the remembered irritation of fall in the city, and some little girl actress and a band he'd never heard of – before he gave up. He was in the process of deciding whether he was going to set himself a new deadline, or just give up and try to sleep when he heard Matt's key in the door.

Matt looked surprised but happy to see him, and John decided to do the polite thing and ask how his date had gone. '_All I have to do is be supportive, make some encouraging noises while Matt putters around the living room and talks himself out_,' he thought, because having a plan is always important, '_and then go back to my room and find something to drown out the image of Matt smiling at someone else, kissing someone else…_'

"It was okay, I guess. I mean, we were both pretty nervous, but he's funny, and we have a lot in common…"

'_just ask where they went to dinner, sit through the story about whatever funny thing the waiter did…_'

"…it was still weird though, I haven't really dated a guy since college, I mean I've, well, you know…"

'_thanks, Matt, I really needed the mental image of your anonymous hookups to go with the romantic comedy plot…_'

"…but not actual dates, with getting-to-know-you conversation. And then, at the end of the night, he wanted to go back to his place, but I don't like the idea of fucking on the first date, when it's actual _dating_, y'know? And I just don't think I could do that…"

'_…thank you God for small miracles…_"

"…and have to see him at work tomorrow. Just, _awkward_. So I think maybe I'll ask him if he wants to go out again on Friday, if he doesn't seem too weird about it, because then it could have a couple of days to be not-weird before work again…"

John finally held up a hand to halt Matt's torrent of words. "Don't."

Matt's eyes widened with whatever conclusion he'd drawn, and he blushed. "Oh, God, man, I'm sorry, I didn't mean- Jesus. How rude can I be, going on like this when you've got this epic dry spell, and, shit, of course you don't care about my fucking _date_ like some fucking _advice columnist_. I'll just…"

John got up off the couch to close some of the distance between them. "No, I mean don't…" John broke off, and said a quick prayer for fortitude or something, because there were so many reasons that finishing that sentence was a really bad idea, the awkward of dating a coworker times a thousand. "Don't… go out with him again."

Matt bristled a little at that, a fire sparking in his eyes that John hadn't seen even in his ranting about work. "Don't take this the wrong way, man, because I like you, I do, and I am really grateful for you putting me up here, but that doesn't mean you get to tell me who I can and can't date. If you have a problem with me seeing a guy, you need to get over it, or I… _fuck_… or I need to find a new place to live. My father doesn't even get a say about that anymore, and you're sure as hell not going to take his place."

That last declaration forced a hopeless chuckle out of John's lips and a mumbled, "well, fuck, I hope not." When confusion colored Matt's features, John paused to look around the room, cataloguing the details of Matt's residence the past few months. "Matt, it doesn't matter that it's a him. It turns out that it matters that it's not me."

"I…what?"

Scratching at skin that was suddenly drawn too tight, John leaned back against the couch, trying to project a calm and a confidence that he had only the slipperiest of grips on. "I don't want you to go out with him again, because I want you to, God help me, go out with me. _Fuck_, Matt, I want you to want me instead."

Matt looked… terrified. He was all too aware of what terrified looked like on that face. "Jesus, McClane, you're not kidding, are you?"

"I wish I was, kid." John gave up and crossed his arms across his chest. "You're right. I'm way outta line trying to tell you anything and… and I won't hassle you, I swear, but I just can't talk to you about him. I can't be cool with that. Take as long as you like, and you know you can still have all that rent money back whenever you find your own place." John closed his eyes, trying to ward off the headache he felt creeping up. "I'm really sorry, kid. Honest," and he turned away to go hide out in his room.

"No." Matt's denial was steady, forceful, and stopped John as he reached the doorway. "You don't get to _do_ that, say all that shit and call me a kid and then run away."

John reached out a hand to lean on the door frame before responding, wearily. "I said I was sorry."

"Why didn't you say something before?" Matt's voice was closer, and John turned to find him a few feet away, his hands hovering at his sides like he wasn't sure what to do with them.

"I didn't mean to ever say anything. It doesn't matter." John just wanted to escape before things got a chance to go from bad to worse.

"No, fuck that, man. You are John Fucking McClane! You went mano a mano with fucking terrorists to save your _wife_! Twice! You have kids! You do not get to be gay and not say anything about it and just fucking _hope_ that someone figures it out, because I guaran-fucking-tee that they never will!"

"I didn't know. Okay? I didn't know, or I wouldn't have started any of this. Just.. just forget about it." The film reel in his head of everything that could possibly go wrong with Matt had expanded to include everything that Holly had ever complained about, that he expected too much, that he gave so much to his job that he was damn near blind at home, that he just expected her to know, so he wouldn't tell her things, and he was starting to feel the call of the bottle in a way he hadn't in a decade.

"I am damn well not going to forget about it," Matt said, and then he was right in front of John and saying, "God, you are such an idiot," before pushing him back into the corner and pressing his lips to John's.

***

 

'_Fuckin' McClane. Of all the stupid…_' The anger fueling the first few moments of the kiss burned off quickly in the face of four months of repressed desire and a fair amount of panic that somehow he'd misinterpreted something and this was the only chance he was going to get. He started walking John over towards his bed, unbuttoning his shirt as he went, but keeping one hand on John's back, keeping their bodies in contact. When John's knees hit the edge of the bed, he staggered but didn't fall, pulling back as much as he could to gasp Matt's name out, questioning.

In response, Matt pushed him back onto the bed before stretching out next to him. "If you're going to say no, here's your chance." He started to work on John's belt. "Otherwise, kindly shut the fuck up," and, done speaking, he joined their lips again.

To his credit, John stopped holding back, and stripped off first Matt's shirt, then his own, as Matt worked on opening their flies. The shock of skin against skin, of _John's_ skin against his, cleared his thoughts enough to give John a second chance to change his mind, but it was a near thing, and when Matt's retreat was met with an improbably needy sound and John's hands twisting in his hair, he stopped inspecting his gift horse and determined to enjoy the ride.

Matt shoved their pants, and then boxers, down as best as he could without separating their bodies, kicking distractedly at the tangle until they were mostly free of it, and then shifted to his side, urging John up over him and freeing his own hands to latch on to the breadth of John's shoulders as they rolled against each other. When he came an embarrassingly short time later, it was with the thought that he really, really hoped they'd get to do that again, properly, and he panted against John's shoulder as John followed him over the edge and collapsed to the bed.

Some minutes later, as their cooling sweat raised goosebumps on his skin and John's weight against him moved from pleasant to circulation-threatening, Matt nosed in between John's face and the pillow to kiss him, before pulling back to wait for John to open his eyes.

He could feel the rumble from John's chest when he asked, "Do I have permission to speak now?" and Matt only chuckled in response, moving in to kiss him again.

"That depends on whether you're going to try to leave me or kick me out again."

"Haven't decided yet-hey now! Watch the goods!" John wrapped his arms and a leg around Matt, and he subsided.

"Too soon," he murmured. "Not funny."

"No, you're right. Not funny at all." Matt felt a whisper of a kiss against his temple in apology.

"I love you, you know." Matt fumbled for the comforter, determined to build a nest and keep John there as long as possible, and John submitted to the cocooning with a yawn and a little grace. He listened to the silence for a few seconds longer before asking, "Too soon?"

"Nah. I love you too. Kid."


End file.
